It’s not how many books you read

My reading history according to Goodreads.

I am a long-time fan of the social networking site Goodreads. Since 2014, I have recorded 532 books “read.” I have 53 friends with whom I share titles and reviews. And I have participated in the Reading Challenge for a number of years, slowly increasing the number of books I intend to read to 52 - one per week.

While I plan to continue using Goodreads to record and share comments about the books I read, I am going to abandon the Reading Challenge. It makes me too anxious.

Motivated by watching the new Shogun streaming series, I decided to re-read Clavell’s novel on which it is based. I believe this is the third time I’ve greatly enjoyed this 1000 page tome. 

The problem is that I have been reading it since April 7th - for well over two weeks. It’s completely destroyed the pace of books I need to complete to meet my 52 book challenge for 2024. Yes, I could listen to audiobooks (I still think of them as books-on-tape.) on long drives. I could purposely select short, easy-to-read titles. I suppose I could even up the number of hours each day I dedicate to reading books, cutting back on newspapers, click bait, and solitaire. 

Instead I will ignore the challenge. There are just some authors (Clavell, Michener, McMurtry, Tolkien among them) who do spin very long, but very good tales I just can’t abandon. I read non-fiction titles that may not be as gripping as thrillers and so are less compelling to read and so take longer. Like walking or biking, I need to relax and enjoy the experience rather than try to meet some extrinsic, self-imposed velocity. 

And I will be happier for it.

Cutting post office expenses

…the Postal Service posted a $6.5 billion loss in the 2023 fiscal year, and it’s on track to lose more than $8 billion in fiscal 2024…Nearly 20% of the nation’s first-class mail was delivered late in late March… “USPS got billions in aid, and now says it needs more”, Star Tribune April 17, 2024

Each morning I receive an email from the post office showing me the mail I can expect to receive that day. It is 99% junk mail - paper advertisements for everything from house siding to cremation services. 

Although I am of the “Boomer” generation, I conduct almost all my financial business - bills, bank statements, credit card balances and payments, and tax filings online. What magazines and newspapers I read, I view online with the exception of the dismal little weekly local paper delivered on Friday that takes five minutes to read and another one minute to recycle. When asked, I automatically choose to receive all communications from organizations I interact with electronically. I do receive (and send) the rare “thank you” card which I enjoy. But the little online automated greetings are just fine with me too.

The USPS could go away tomorrow and I can’t say that I would miss it very much. 

I grew up with a mailbox at the end of the lane on a farm. The daily mail was exciting. The Des Moines Register came everyday, placed in that mailbox by a mailman we knew by name. Whom we gifted on Christmas. Greeting cards and handwritten letters appeared often. We were proud that my great-uncle Bob, a WWI vet, worked in the town’s post office. The mail, the party line telephone, AM radio, and over the air television were my childhood and young adult media. 

But sometimes sentimentality needs to be set aside. With the exception of package delivery driven by online ordering, the services of the USPS are irrelevant to many of us - even cranky old Boomers. It seems package delivery could be handled by FedEx, UPS, or Amazon just as well or better.

Yeah, I know there are people who don’t do email, don’t do online banking, don’t have smartphones or computers or internet access. (I think both of them live in Montana.) So for a while, anyway, the postal service needs to continue. 

But why not start scaling it back now. I could certainly live with getting my mail every other day or even just once a week. Stop Saturday delivery, for sure. Wouldn’t that cut down on the number of delivery persons needed, trucks to buy and maintain and fuel? Increase the number of automated mailing stations and increase their capacity for larger packages. Don’t we have better things on which to spend our tax dollars?

I suspect Ben Franklin would roll over in his grave if read this but, Ben, times have changed. (But I still appreciate bifocal lenses in my glasses.)

Smoking: Is it a health issue or a moral issue?

Vice: /vīs/ noun: immoral or wicked behavior.

There is a proposal before the activist-driven Minneapolis City Council to mandate raising the price of a pack of cigarettes to $15 per pack. It seems to have made a lot of smokers and convenience store owners unhappy. 

I am a former smoker. I started stealing my dad’s Camel straights when I was in high school and then smoked regularly until I was 34 - so nearly 20 years. (Nearly half of Americans smoked in the 1960s, including both my parents.) I remember exactly when I stopped smoking - it was when my son was born, having read Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was more likely in homes of smokers. I’ve lapsed a few times in the intervening years, but should cigs go up to $100 a pack, I wouldn’t care. In fact, I now find the smell of cigarette smoke nearly intolerable.

What seems interesting to me is that smoking has become as much a moral failing - a vice - as a poor health choice. If you are a smoker today, it is because you have a bad value system or are too weak to overcome an addiction. We could add eating processed/snack foods, drinking sugary sodas, not wearing a bike helmet, gambling, refusing to get vaccinated, and reckless driving to behaviors we as a society deem moral failings - but attributing our disgust to beliefs they are poor health (physical and financial) choices.

I do think it is somewhat ironic that Minnesota politicians over the past few years have legalized marijuana, allowed liquor to be sold on Sundays, supported sports betting, and guaranteed women’s rights to abortions. In other words, opened the doors to activities many would consider vices, but are doing what they can to clamp down on tobacco use, including banning flavored and menthol products. 

Why is the Marlboro man such a pariah and not Tony the Tiger?